Growth, jobs and morehttp://zturk.blogactiv.eu
Žiga Turk, professor, former minister and secretary general of the Reflection Group writes about the future of growth, innovation, technology, sustainable development, creativity etc.Mon, 05 Dec 2016 09:55:03 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5Slovenia Celebrates End of Crisis with New Holidayhttp://zturk.blogactiv.eu/archives/372
Mon, 05 Dec 2016 09:46:52 +0000http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/?p=372» read more]]>At risk of non-compliance withStability and Growth Pact, running a budget deficit during an expansion cycle, unable to fix public healthcare, unable to do a pension reform, unable to address the public sector’s trade union requirements, but growing at 2.2% … the Government of Slovenia is celebrating the end of the great depression that lasted from 2009-2015 by introducing a new holiday – January 2nd.

January 2nd is not actually new. Most regimes in the former Eastern Block introduced two work-free days for New Year so as to replace Christmas which was banned. Similarly they introduced two work free days for May 1st – for a good measure of social justice after cancelling Easter.

May 2nd still is a holiday in Slovenia but January 2nd was cancelled at the peak of the crisis in 2012. It is now being re-introduced so that the working people of Slovenia “could have a proper rests after the exhausting New Year’s celebrations”.

Twitosphere suggested that the name of the new holiday would be Mirovdan – the Miro Cerar Day. Mr. Cerar is the current prime minister hoping to boost his popularity with this “not populist” proposal.

]]>Congratulations, Mr. Trump ?http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/archives/357
Fri, 18 Nov 2016 13:37:54 +0000http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/?p=357» read more]]>Trump won. Surprising for some, shocking for others, even apocalyptic. Nevertheless, European leaders send congratulation letters. They quite interesting at what they say. And even more interesting at what they don’t say.

French President Hollande congratulated Trump, because that is a decent thing to do and “natural between two democratic heads of state” and pointed to the common foundations of the two countries

“democracy, freedom and respect for the individual.“

German Chancellor Merkel was more specific:

“Germany and America are bound together by values: democracy, freedom, respect of law and respect of people regardless of their origin, the color of their skin, their religion, gender, sexual orientation or their political beliefs. On the basis of these values I am offering to work closely with the future President of the United States, Donald Trump”.

The European institutions did – as usual – a compromise between the French and the German solution. President of the European Council Tusk and president of the European Commission Juncker pointed out that the cooperation between Europe and the United States is rooted in the values that we share:

“freedom, human rights, democracy and faith in the market economy.“

Those who followed Trumps escapades in the campaign will quickly find the link between what was lectured in the congratulation letters and Trump’s raunchy campaign messages. Tusk and Juncker considered it necessary to draw attention to US-EU trade and refused to call TTIP dead. For each of the values listed in Merkel’s letter one could find criticism of Trump’s so-called fascist messages about Mexicans, blacks, Muslims, women.

All four of them, and many, many others not quoted in this article, recited what are considered our common values. Indeed, such is the accepted wisdom: we may be different in EU and US, but respect for these values is the common denominator that binds us together, and which enables peaceful coexistence. These values, so the narrative goes, are universal. Failure to comply with these values suggests the breakdown of the liberal global world order and leads to chaos and war. One newspaper went so far as to call Angela Merkel the last defender of the liberal world order.

Its not about Trump!

This article will argue that:

European leaders have learned nothing neither from Brexit nor from Trump.

That they have failed to recognize that the underlying values of the “liberal world order” are broader than what they claim.

That in order to preserve the liberal world order we must embrace other values and principles in addition to those lectured to Donald Trump.

That particular responsibility for this have centre right politicians like Ms. Merkel, Mr. Tusk and Mr. Juncker.

This article will not argue about Trump’s rhetoric or his capacity for the job of the President of the United States. This article is not about Trump; it is about the common ground of Western societies. What it is getting from Trump is just a wake-up call.

Cracks in the progressive consensus

Perhaps the most important and deeper message of Trump’s victory is that the values Merkel, Hollande, Tusk and Juncker listed, and which we take for granted, are not the values on which the modern society rests. They are important values and should be cherished. We should all strive for “freedom, human rights, democracy and a market economy.”

But these are not the only values. There are other. Empirical evidence for this is that Trump and Brexit were speaking to some other values and succeeded.

Not understanding that there are other values out there explains the inability of public intellectuals to explain what happened in the US or the UK without resorting to phrases such as post-truth politics and claiming that the winning majority in the UK or US is uniformed, stupid or even mean. Life would be easy if they were. But they are not.

Science of values

The scientific explanation for the blindness of mostly progressive media and public intellectuals is in Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. It claims that people often decide intuitively and not necessarily rationally. That we base our intuitive decisions on six different moral foundations: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. The progressive commentariat only has a feeling for the first three of the six foundations. Many people – particularly the “deplorables” – additionally have an instinct for loyalty, authority and sanctity.

In his campaign Trump was successfully addressing loyalty to America and the need for authority of American leadership. His running mate Pence was addressing feelings for sanctity of American Christians.

This is perfectly illustrated by a post-electoral tweet by Donald Trump addressed to protesters rioting in the streets against him:

“Imagine what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people under one God saluting one flag.“

To those of us living in a Platonic progressive cave and used only to politically correct shadows projected on our TV screens these words have an uneasy ring to them. They sound almost like “ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer”. But the latter is just a warning what happens if the centrist democratic politicians fail to base their policies on the entire spectrum of moral foundations.

Conservative discontent and responsibility

Of course, people in Germany and the US do not belong to the same nation, they do not direct their patriotism at the same country, but nevertheless, patriotism is a value they have in common. We do not share the same country, the same culture, the same civilization, the same God. But we share feelings for belonging and identity, like we share love of freedoms and justice. Not only are common values universal, there are also values that, though not common, are universal.

But it is not usual to talk about them. In a letter to Trump, nobody wrote that our common values are “freedom, human rights, democracy, faith in the market economy and also loyalty to our culture, love for our homeland, respect of our traditions and religions”. Progressive universalism pretends that the second part (after the “and also”) does not exist. Or that it exists only in its dangerous extreme that should be swept under the carpet, labelled politically incorrect, demonized or even banned.

This is the point at which conservatives should disagree. They should argue to broaden the common foundations of our liberal societies with respect for traditional values and recognition that identification with our communities, nations, states, culture and religion is positive. The socialists will not do it, the liberals will not do it, and be assured, if the conservatives don’t do it, someone will. And then it will not be benign, it will not be balanced with the other values.

This balance of values is a unique contribution only conservatives can make. So far, unfortunately, the center-right missed the opportunity to do so.

Imagine!

Both Trump and Brexit have a message for the ailing Union of ours. To paraphrase Trump:

“Imagine what our European Union could accomplish if we started working together as one people under one God saluting one flag.”

Indeed, in Europe we are not one people, but we are a single culture. Indeed, some claim not to have a God while others may pray differently. Indeed, we have two flags, national and European, not just one.

Indeed.

But if we are unable to address people’s instincts of belonging and channel some of those towards Europe, Europe will not survive.

]]>The EU Still is Attractive!http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/archives/350
Tue, 25 Oct 2016 12:04:58 +0000http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/?p=350» read more]]>There are few good news coming from Brussels these days. The pundits are still wondering if Brexit will happen, hoping it would not and wondering at the same time how hard it will be. CETA negotiations are an embarrassment for the EU. They showed that not only one single country but one region in a small member state can block a trade agreement. To make matters worse, common market and trade policy used to be a least contested and best functioning EU policy area. Agreement on migration policy is non-existent. The Euro crisis persists. Turkey is cooling in its EU membership ambitions.

In all this doom and gloom it was so refreshing to see that the Union remains attractive at least to some. Recently I took part in an event in Belgrade, Serbia, that gathered the government officials and civil society deliberating how to speed up the accession negotiations and how to better prepare Serbia for it.

Most striking was the enthusiasm of young people – students who were showing short viral YouTube videos (on chapters 11, 19 i 23) what the EU can mean for their peers. It was great to see that the youth of Serbia is so pro-European. Very clearly Europe is in their future. The event was organized by the Deutche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit and the Serbian National Convention on the EU.

The latter is “a permanent body for thematically structured debate on Serbian accession into the European Union, between representatives of the governmental bodies, political parties, NGOs, experts, syndicates, private sector and representatives of professional organizations”. It has a numerous following and an impressive working plan that includes “shadow” expert groups on various negotiation chapters that will have to be addressed by Serbian negotiators. EU accession is clearly not a program of the governing elites but also of the NGOs and the young.

I am not sure about the attitudes of the older generations but I not a pessimist. On the same day there was a celebration of World War II liberation of Belgrade. The number of vintage communist flags was much, much smaller than what we are used to seeing in Slovenia. But the elderly sealed Brexit in the UK. In Serbia they look towards Russia, who is a reliable partner of this also Slavic and also Orthodox country.

There is nothing wrong with that, Russia is a European power, but Brussels would do well to recognize and value that there are European countries still enthusiastic to join and who are demonstrating that the EU still is attractive. It is one of these things that could disperse some of the gloom so evident in these rainy autumn days in Brussels.

]]>A European future of Europe?http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/archives/338
Thu, 15 Sep 2016 06:09:42 +0000http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/?p=338» read more]]>The key problem of Europe is ontological. We are not sure what the European Union actually is. Is it a free trade area, a giant NGO based in Brussels and doing good for Europe and the World, or perhaps a country in the making? The compromise answer, popular in Brussels, is that Europe is a project. The project is something that is not static, which is being developed, and has not yet reached its final form.

Brussels vs. Bratislava

As long as Europe is a project, it is possible to talk about the future of Europe. As long as Europe is a project, it can be illustrated as a bicycle – standing upright until it moves forward. Euro crisis, migrant crisis and Brexit have slowed down this bicycle or even reversed its direction. One cannot drive a bicycle backwards. This is in fact the problem to be addressed by the leaders of the EU Member States this week in Bratislava. How to get the bicycle going again.

They will, as many times before, debate the future of Europe, more precisely the future of the European Union. The point of this writing is that if the European Union has an ambition to be more than a free trade area or a non-governmental organization, if it will be getting attributes of statehood, it needs a solid foundation for that.

Many agree that the EU should move in the direction of an ever closer union. And everyone agrees that a solid foundation is needed. The disagreement is in what is the essence of this foundation. One disagreement is between the right and the left. The right sees the EU founded on the common market. The left sees it founded on social justice and solidarity.

This article is about another kind of disagreement. I will argue that the future of the European Union can not be based on an ideology, neither left nor right; that ideology can not be a foundation of a union with an ambition to get some attributes of a country.

Ideas vs. Feelings

I understand ideology as a rational system of ideas – product of an enlightened human mind. Examples of such systems of ideas are socialism, free maket, environmentalism, multiculturalism, framework of human rights and the rule of law etc. Ideologies are the results of reflection. Many are good, some are also bad.
That ideology can not be the foundation of a country is the main message of Samuel P. Huntington’s (of Clash of Civilizations fame) book “Who we are”. He argues that countries based on ideology failed. For example Czechoslovakia, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Author’s former home state of Yugoslavia was held together by the socialist ideology and the ideology of brotherhood and unity of nations. Similarly, Czechoslovakia and the USSR.

Alternative to ideology are feelings, instincts and culture – everything that is pre-rational, subconscious, which is not the result of complex intellectual exercise, but people simply have it in their blood and genes. Those moral foundations provide, according to Jonathan Haidt, the basis for group cohesion and are the basis of nation states. These foundations include kin, religion, language, history, nation.

Therefore, Slovenians, Croats, Serbs, Albanians, Montenegrans, Macedonians and Bosnians wanted to live in different countries. Stronger than the cohesive effects of the socialist ideology, Yugoslav common market, free movement of people within Yugoslavia and common currency, stronger were the disintegrating feelings based in language, history and religion. In Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union too, instincts trumped ideology, common market and common currency.

Elites vs. the Rest

This superiority of stone age instincts over intellectual achievements is hard to swallow by intellectuals and other reasoning people. It seems impossible that in the 21st century pristine senses of tribe and nation prevail over the achievements of the human mind, such as free market, common currency or social justice. But only to intellectuals. Most people do not bother trying to understand the reasoning how “good” is to have the widest possible community to achieve social justice (or free market). Ideologues of both central left and central right have a common problem.

Majority of people take a shortcut and listen to their instincts. These instincts tell them, that Germans will not pay for the social justice in Greece, while they may be willing to tolerate taxes to achieve social justice in their German homeland. These instincts tell them to charge customs on imported goods if this helps save German jobs. It does not help much if intellectuals explain that open markets (or social justice) are good for all. Somewhere deep down, people feel something. And there is a limit to how far and how deep political elites can run counties against such feelings.

This divide between the reason of the elites and the instincts of ordinary people explain Brexit, Sanders, Trump and the whole host populist movements in the EU member states. In good times, most people tolerate or largely ignore ideology. The elites may be convinced by the rationality of the arguments even in bad times. But not the rest.

It is intellectually appealing to base the future European Union on common market, human rights, social justice and solidarity but, in my reading of Huntington, it will not work.

Geography vs. Civilization

If the European Union should become a closer union – and I think in some areas it must become stronger – then this will not be possible only on ideological, rational, enlightened foundations, no matter how much are the intellectuals are fond of them. More Europe is necessary for the protection of external borders, maintaining security, ensuring free market and the rule of law. But the foundation should be the European identity: who we are, how we are, and how we are different from that which is not Europe. Elements of this identity are religion, civilization and culture.

A closer Union can be accepted by the European citizens if this Union is seen as a guardian of European culture and civilization. Or, if is sounds more politically correct, European “values”. It can be only as much closer as much intuitive awareness of European civilization exists within Europeans. Multicultural Europe seems a good idea to those who are not part of European culture and to the enlightened minority that hopes noble ideas can trump basic human instincts.

In reality, however, Europe founded on ideology is bound to fail.

]]>Remember Paris!http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/archives/330
Wed, 18 Nov 2015 11:16:30 +0000http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/?p=330» read more]]>Indeed, huge majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But majority of perpetrators of terrorist acts in Europe since 2001 are Muslims. That fifteen million European Muslims generate more terrorist – including the thousands that travel to join ISIS – than half a billion of Europeans shows that their integration in Europe, especially in France, is failing.

What can’t Europe do?

Campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq did achieve little but regrouping of radical Islamists into a different organization. Bombing the Middle East to stone age will not achieve much either. We should stop the migration flows and improve the border controls. This would make sense at least until we learn how to better integrate Muslims into our societies.

But what about all those who already are in Europe? Again, I do not believe much can be achieved by violence. Fencing off Muslim ghettos or sending young jobless people to labor camps is unjust, inhumane and stupid. Policing and security checks are just the last line of defense.

Battles with Islamists may be won with weapons, the war not.

Maybe we need more social workers for Muslim neighborhoods. More basketball and football fields. More and better teachers at schools. More jobs and/or higher welfare. Maybe. I am not so sure, because these services are quite extensive already.

Win the culture war

Recently it became politically incorrect to claim that at least in the last five hundred years, the European civilization has been by far the most successful one on the planet and with clearly superior achievements to its neighbors across the Mediterranean. Calling that Eurocentrism does not make these claims false.

Europe did not achieve that because of some kind of racial or genetic superiority. We did not have better hardware, we had better software. The fight with Islamic extremism is a fight of two softwares – one that enabled the most successful civilization on earth and the other that – if used dogmatically – was keeping whole nations in the middle ages.

It simply needs to become more attractive to be a member of European civilization. It should become “in” not to be a member of a local gang of immigrants, but part of the civilization that built the Champs Elysées, Tulleries and the Arc de Triomphe, Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Church of Saint Sulspice and the Eiffel Tower, the civilization that has painted the artwork in the Louvre and Orsay, be a part of a country that gave humanity Joan of Arc, Louis Pasteur, Marie Courie and Claude Debussy.

How does this compare to the achievements of the countries that Muslims came from? Politically incorrect question? Here is a politically incorrect answer: at the climax of their power they added minarets to the largest building on earth at the time – Christian church of Haiga Sofia. And not much else. OK, I am exaggerating. The Arab Science in the Middle Ages had quite a few achievements but was held back in the ivory towers. Western Science changed the world.

Why are we Westerners unable to share the pride in the achievements of our brilliant civilization to the immigrants? Why not all of them want to become a contributing force of this?

Muslim youth could participate in the construction of the largest aircraft and the fastest trains in the world, instead some are planning to bomb them. Europe had an open border for a long time, they were welcomed, and yet so many remain strangers.

But not with relativism

Perhaps this is so because some of the Westerners lost faith in themselves, lost the pride in their own achievements and roots. Yes, I am talking about you who were appalled by the deliberate political incorrectness and Euro-supremacism of last couple paragraphs.

How to give an African or an Arabian a wish to become part of this great civilization, if some Europeans prefer to deny their fathers, religion, civilization and its achievements? How can becoming a European be attractive if values that are immanently European are labelled “universal human values”?

No, comrades, Liberté, égalité, fraternité are not universal human values. Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, neither. These are Western values. Fabrique en France, made in the USA!
As long as some are ashamed to be European we can’t expect immigrants to wish to become a part of our society and culture.

This society is secular in principle with enough of room for Muslim faith, culture and identity, but without genital mutilation of women, arranged marriages of minors, gender inequality, stoning of gays and bloggers etc.

If being European is not able to inspire, then it is only right that Europe is occupied by a culture which can. The vacuum created by relativism, conceptual entropy and cultural capitulation will be filled with something. Anything, including Salafism. The sooner the better. There will be fewer victims.

Remember Paris 1789

But if it matters to be European, then European must be our response to the atrocities. Civilized not barbaric, determined, not wishy-washy, proud not shy. Guilt is always individual and never collective. Their way is to kill the innocent, our method is to process the suspects. Sharpy, strongy and fairly.

If we want to win the war of culture the last thing we should do is abandon our principles and values.

As long as it is proven otherwise, everybody, Muslims and non-Muslims, are free and equal first-class citizens with all their freedoms, rights and duties. Equal they are and equal we have been, maybe because 2000 years ago someone said that we are all children of God. And definitively because it was in Paris in 1789 where someone wrote: “People are born free and with equal rights.”

Not only if we forget what that means but also if we deny who and in what tradition invented this, in both cases, Europe as we know it, is dead.

]]>Internet after Net Neutrality Regulation: The best is yet to comehttp://zturk.blogactiv.eu/archives/322
Fri, 30 Oct 2015 16:06:55 +0000http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/?p=322» read more]]>People argue. Some argue to prove that they are right. Others argue to make things right. For the time being, the argument about net neutrality is over. The Regulation does not go neutral all the way, but it would be wrong to claim that this was a defeat for net neutrality just for the sake of proving how right the advocates of harder net neutrality provisions were.

In the days after, the Internet is full of panicky messages how terrible the Internet is going to become. How after the passing of the Regulation company such-and-such will now act so-and-so and this would be just terrible for everyone.

The first thing to be said is that if the Regulation was rejected, company such-and-such could be doing so-and-so anyway. As they were able to do so before Tuesday. With the exception of The Netherlands and Slovenia, protection of net neutrality in Europe is now stronger, not weaker.

From here onward there are two options.

1) Activists can use the argument of company such-and-such as a proof that they were right. That Internet will be turning into living hell, congested, full of paywalls and commercial service. That, as the doomsayers and fearmongers were saying all along, the Internet as we know it, is dead. This is exactly the interpretation that the part of the industry that was against net neutrality wants to prevail. Do you really want to help them?

2) On the other hand we can argue that company such-and-such should not start behaving so-and-so. Absolutely not. That the Regulation is not as toothless and that it explicitly prohibits it. That it is, even without the amendments, perfextly clear.
That, for example, “optimized service” (Article 3, paragraph 5) does pop into existence because a telco will give priority to some service’s traffic, but that it is vice versa. And that the “optimized service” should not be available through internet access in the first place. Like digital TV you may have at home.

In summary

Now it the time to fight for the interpretation of the clauses as adopted. Before Tuesday it made some sense to panic about how weak they are. After Tuesday we need to read them in the way that advances net neutrality.

Indeed even in the most “neutral” reading the clauses will not satisfy the purists, but I remain convinced that the Frank Sinatra quote still applies to the Internet. “The best is yet to come”.

In about tweet: Slovenia created a “bad bank” to solve the banking crisis. It hired Scandinavians to run it independently of old boys’ networks. They got too independent and were sacked.

As a measure for saving its failing banking sector, Slovenia in 2013 established a “bad bank”, officially called Bank Assets Management Company (BAMC). The BAMC purchased some 1.6B€ worth of non-performing assets from the banks which were also recapitalized by the government with some 4B€. Total cost of the operation is over 5.5B€ which is a lot of taxpayer money for a country with a population of only 2 million.

In 2013 Slovenian government hired few foreigners – independent of the local business milieu – to manage BAMC. Their independence proved unpleasant, to say the least.

The next government lowered their salaries mid-term, hoping they would quit. They did not. Possibly they found other means to remunerate their work. Possibly not. Then BAMC was investigated by the local Court of Audit and the local Commission for the Prevention of Corruption. Both institutions have been exploited for political battles in the past. Ironically, while having problems with the local watchdogs, the BAMC was certified internationally by Ethic Intelligence for its program to prevent corruption.

In the beginning of October a media campaign was launched that claimed that the foreign executives of the BAMC did not adjust their salaries to the government regulations. All national dailies and TV stations, without exception, played along in unison in a populist exploitation of envy and xenophobia.

Last week the centre-left government fired Chairman of the Management BoardLars Nyberg and CEO Torbjörn Manson claiming it “lost confidence” in them.

Old boys’ privatization

In the root of the matter was the privatization as it unfolded in Slovenia. Often it would have the form of the management buyout – the people who were managing the company would get a loan from the state owned bank to buy the company and then pay back the loan from the profits that the company was making.

There were two problems with this approach. Firstly, many would get the loan simply because they were part of the old boys network that controlled the Slovenian economy and banking ever since Slovenia was still a Socialist Republic.

And secondly, the economic crisis of 2008-2014 did hurt the businesses. They simply did not generate enough profit any more for the repayment of the loans. It could be that the crisis in Slovenia took such a long time precisely because of the unwillingness to admit that the old boys were are about to loose much their wealth and most governments were trying to postpone that.

Enters “bad bank”

Many such assets were transferred to the “bad bank” which was trying to make the best of that property; the best for Slovenian taxpayer and not for the owners or managers of the failing companies.

In the Sava case, given what I have seen and read, I feel a smell of corruption in every corner. Is this really what you meant in your campaign when you talked about fighting corruption? Is this the direction in which you want to lead Slovenia?

Indeed this seems to be the direction. Old boys seem to be taking over the BAMC to preserve their property and the capture of Slovenian state, economy, media and politics.

The direction got an even sharper image just a three days after the letter. On Thursday police special investigation forces raided the BAMC headquarters looking for “irregularities in salary and consulting contracts”.

The third Scandinavian at the top of BAMC team, Janne Harjunpää, is giving up as well, telling Slovenians to fight their own battles, that he is not their Che Guavara. This interview for Slovenian television is in English and starts at 0:52.

Key quotes:

We are working on some high profile cases. Apparently we have stepped on some very big toes.

…

Mr. Nyberg is a very senior person who has seen a lot, is the former vice governor of the Swedish National Bank, he was the adviser of Barroso, he has been everywhere. I have a reason to think he has a very precise nose.

The political left, including the government, believes that after all this the “bad bank” will be better. Spelled with a “t”. The right mostly believes it will be worse. The title of this piece is a compromise in spelling it.

PS. BAMC will be hiring. Newspapers are reporting that the government wants the top of the “bad bank” to be independent.

]]>Net-neutrality in the Times of Crisishttp://zturk.blogactiv.eu/archives/299
Mon, 01 Jun 2015 09:54:27 +0000http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/?p=299» read more]]>In the context of the Telecoms Single Market (TSM) package the European Council and the European Parliament are revisiting the issue of net neutrality. Net neutrality is a principle of internet traffic management that says that all internet traffic should be treated equally, regardless of the content, sender or receiver.

As responsible minister I introduced the net neutrality principle into the Slovenian Telecommunications Act in 2012, making Slovenia the second EU member state to guarantee the Internet to remain an open and equal opportunity technology.

Road to serfdom

Neutrality is a principle used in public roads, for example, where the same speed limits apply to rich and poor, and same fees are charged weather a lorry is carrying computers or gravel. We do not believe that the road administration should be getting a cut of the profit that is made by those that transport goods from one end of Europe to the other. Because high priced Gucci bags are on a truck that passes under the Mont Blanc, Gucci is not expected to share its profits with the operator of the tunnel.

Yes, there are exceptions like the ambulances. And there are exceptions like was the trafficking cigarettes from Montenegro to Italy. The operators of the fast boats used to smuggle cigarettes got a cut of the profits. To carry illegal cigarettes was more expensive than transporting tourists. I do not mind an occasional ambulance, but not that internet architecture would borrow business practices from the mafia.

Infrastructure as a public utility is a solution we have since we dismantled feudalism. In medieval Europe it was so that in order to pass certain rivers or mountain passes, the fee was not proportional to the weight or size of the load but to its value. Merchants were charged what they could afford to pay not what it cost the city to maintain a bridge.

That same principle applied to the internet, so they argue, would stimulate growth and investment. As if the arrangements in the middle ages resulted in superior roads, state of the art rafts and bridges. On the contrary.

No bandwidth crisis

Perhaps the greatest poet of the Middle Ages Dante Aligheri wrote: “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis”. We could paraphrase that into:

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain net-neutrality in times of bandwidth crisis”.

True. But there is no bandwidth crisis. Yes, they wish it would be. Businesses like scarcity. Without scarcity power profits are harder to make. But there is no scarcity of bandwidth.

I did my first service on the internet in 1994. It was a search engine for free software. Entire Slovenia, at that time, was linked to the Internet with a bandwidth of 256 kbit/second. This is the speed at which your mobile phone connects to the internet in some backcountry where 3G or 4G are not available.

Was that scarce? Yes, if you look at it statically, no if you take a dynamic perspective. The bandwidth has been growing over the decades exponentially and there is no technical reason it would not continue to do so in the future.

If some control freak would try to address the scarcity issue in 1994 I am sure my service would not be considered a priority. As would not be a priority a bunch of other things people do on the Internet. But the net was neutral at the time and the local ISP simply doubled the capacity every now and then.

In fact more investment into the internet backbone can be expected if the model continues to support net neutrality simply because traffic demands would be higher.

Shortsighted and local-patriotic

A painful fact for Europe remains its inability to create a Google, Facebook or Apple. And the response seems to be, if we can’t create such companies, we will sue them. Or bend legislation against them. Or we will destroy net neutrality so that our telecoms could tap into the profits of Google and Facebook. At the same time we will protect European culture by giving a fast lane, for example, to European movies and a slower one for American movies.

Had this been the policy over the last 25 years there would be no such thing as the internet but 28 different Minitels, peddling the local services to the local population.

Had Internet not been neutral, we would not be complaining about roaming today as we are. In addition to complaining about 28 different prices for data traffic we would be complaining about 28 different regimes to access each of dozens of different services.

To date, Europe was unable to create a digital single market. But at least the internet forced it to have single digital infrastructure. Breaching net-neutrality opens the doors to further Balkanization of the digital in Europe.

Davids vs. Goliaths

The fight for net neutrality is the fight between Davids and Goliaths. The Goliaths are not just the national telecoms that politicians tend to be patriotic about, but big American companies. They too could benefit immensely if the net neutrality principle is abandoned.

If we do not keep the internet open so that innovation can happen at its edges, European SMEs will stand an even lesser chance of ever growing into a Google or Facebook. The Davids are the small companies where innovation comes from. They are good at innovating not lobbying.

The goal – artificial scarcity

Economists are very clear about this. If net neutrality principle is dropped, ISPs and telecoms will be able to create an artificial scarcity of bandwidth. Artificial, because in an industry driven by the exponential growth under Moore’s law, scarcity is not an issue.

Artificial scarcity is something business like the most. Unlike real scarcity that can be addressed with innovation, artificial scarcity is addressed by legislating, under the table dealings, privileges, quotas and other medieval practices.

Artificial scarcity benefits those with market power. It benefits the existing big players. If Google scares you, imagine, for example, how scary a Google – Deutsche Telekom oligopoly would be to those in the Deutche Telekom’s area of market dominance.

The minute fast lanes are introduced, the innovation and investment in internet infrastructure would slow down. What everyone will try to do is benefit most from the scarcity of the bandwidth. The internet, as we know it – an engine of innovation and a force for equal opportunity – will be over.

Even the libertarians should understand that artificial scarcity in the hands of big business is a bigger danger than some rather straightforward regulation such as net neutrality.

What politician are you?

Tim Harford wrote, that

“a politician who is in favor of markets believes in the importance of competition and wants to prevent businesses from getting too much scarcity power. A politician who’s too influenced by corporate lobbyists will do exactly the reverse.”

Less net neutrality means more scarcity power.

In the next days and weeks we shall be able to see who is who in the European politics.

]]>Greece: its not about the austerityhttp://zturk.blogactiv.eu/archives/286
Tue, 03 Feb 2015 13:32:13 +0000http://zturk.blogactiv.eu/?p=286» read more]]>Greek elections were not about the end of austerity and debt-write off. This was just an election narrative that captured the hearts of the Greek electorate and, surprisingly, dazzled large majority of the pundits, commentators and economists in Europe.

As good as it gets

As financial analysts are explaining, countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal are spending larger share of their GDP to service their official debt than Greece. Much of the debt has already been written off or “hair cut”, a lot has been reprogrammed, postponed, the interest rates on the European loans are quite small. The troika is not requiring any substantial new austerity measures anyway. Much of what Syriza claims it wants has been done already.

In the words of Daniel Gros: “… in the end, the difference between a government that has never made good on its promises to pay and a government that promises not to pay might not be that large.”

If not much will change with respect to debt and austerity, what was this election really about then?

Economy?

The problem of Greece is that it is not competitive, exports are sluggish and foreign investors are avoiding it. There is much to be done to make the country friendlier to entrepreneurs. This may include liberating the markets from the capture of tycoons and family networks that prevent fair competitive capitalism. It also includes a more efficient public sector.

The elections were hardly about this either.

Instead of a debate how to achieve that Greek economy would earn more, the elections were a mix of national and social populism. Like any populists, Syriza exploited natural and (in fact positive) instincts of compassion and patriotism.

National and social populism

The national populism was manufacturing an outside enemy in Europe and particularly Germany. The social one was spreading hatred towards capitalists and was promising hand-outs that the Greek citizens should be getting. Cheaper rents, cheaper oil, higher minimum wage, even more employment in the public sector …

National and/or social populism has proven a receipt for populists, anarchists and radicals to get to power. Generally few people fall for it. But under special circumstances, like war or major crisis, it works. As we have learned the hard way in the 20th century.

What is also needed is wishful thinking by democrats. A conviction that what populists say is what they really want. Like ending the humiliation of a country and all will be well; abolishing a treaty; some other small concession.

Economists (equipped with a hammer they too tend to see all problems as nails) are already proposing a compromise between what Syriza wants and what the EU and the creditors need to stick to.

Power. To the “people”

The real danger of Syriza and other populist left and right wing parties is their ambition for revival of ideology that has been proven wrong in the 20th century. Its essence is a disrespect for the human rights, the individual, her life, freedom and property.

The fight against domestic and foreign enemies in the noble name of social justice and patriotism was just a pretext, a side show, a slide show, to capture the hearts of the voters. Let’s not mistake this with the real agenda of the radical left – which is capturing of power and ruling the country, perhaps Europe, according to their ideological agenda. The agenda is to shape a “radically new post 2008 world”.

Center, left and right

The radicals and populists may not be alone in this. Tony Judt once wrote that the Western European social democrats were always envious of their Easter European communist comrades. The latter could exercise the leftist agenda without the trouble of elections and without checks and balances of democratic society.

Today, traditional European left has a choice to make. Are left wing populists and radicals an ally or a competitor? Should they celebrate their success and join them in their struggle for a “better” world. Or see them as an enemy of democracy and liberty and therefore incompatible with modern Europe.

While the left may be inclined towards appeasement, the center right must confront populism with reason. That there are no free lunches. That hard work pays. That opportunities are there to exploit for everyone. That jobs are created by entrepreneurs and the role of the state is to make sure there is fair competition among them.

That solidarity is important too and it is not just an internal affair of each member state.

Revival of populist and radical utopian regressions, not the debate about more or less austerity, is the story behind the curtains in Greece and beyond. Debating austerity and hoping for an economic compromise is a discussion about a smokescreen. Not entirely irrelevant, but definitively not central.

Dropbox then pushed the photos to the cloud (again, quite a pain, because iPhone may decide to go to sleep while doing it).

Pick up Photos on a laptop, move them to a non-Dropbox folder. After all I do not have an unlimited Dropbox space.

Use Total Commander to rename them and assign the time and date of when the photo was taken as the file name. Reason: one never knows when a photo editing software would change the times embedded in the jpeg. Camera+, for example, changes the file modification date but not, luckily the EXIF dates.

Use Picassa for final editing and organizing photos into native Windows folders. Photos are too important to be committed to a single tool. Like iPhoto or Windows Live Galley. Files and folders of the operating system are here to stay for decades.

The final destination is synced on a Copy cloud for backup purposes. The main reason is that Copy is much more generous with free space than Dropbox.

Here is my new Android workflow:

Take photos with stock camera app. In my case the MIUI camera app.

Review, delete, edit photos with Google Photos. It comes with Android, has a very efficient GUI and filters are as good as any other tool. From time to time I may use PerfectlyClear (to deal with exposure problems), PicsArt (if in artistic mood) or Photo Editor (perspective corrections). Beware of photo editors that modify EXIF information and replace the info about when and where photo was taken with where and when it was edited (such as PicsArt)!

Let Dropbox push the photos to the cloud. Works like a charm on Android.

Use Dropbox (on another device perhaps) to delete duplicate versions of the same photo (edited, original, the one published in Instagram ...).

Continue on laptop as above.

The main post processing job with mobile-phone photography is choosing what photos to keep. The fewer the better. The workflows above are such that allow for ample opportunities to delete.